1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to Many marketers are challenged with the need to create in-store pre-pack displays that are easy to set up and meet stringent size constraints set by retail stores. Also in our competitive retail environment there is more and more pressure on marketers to produce lower cost products and lower cost merchandisers to display their products in-store. This has forced many marketers to travel great distances, including overseas, to seek out low cost suppliers, as a result, these marketers often incur heavy shipping costs in delivering their finished goods to retailers. These high shipping costs often result in higher costs to the customers, or lower profits to the marketers and/or their retail partners. To manage these heavy shipping costs, there is a growing need for displays to ship more and more efficiently with minimal “empty or air” space, thereby maximizing the number of displays that will fit on a pallet. Any solutions to help maximize the number of displays on a pallet are welcomed by marketers that ship product over great distances.
Pressure from competition, and pressure from retailers wanting their stores to look more attractive to their customers, has created a demand for more attractive in-store displays that are more effective in selling thru the displayed product(s). These combined market pressures have created an ever growing need for temporary display solutions that are efficiently produced, easy to pre-pack with product, ship efficiently, are easy to set up in store. Further there is a need for these displays to be constructed with adequate space for displaying selling messages to help sell through the product(s) in store. And finally, even though in certain cases there may be some display construction solutions that work well for some types of products, there are no known display constructions that offer systematic solutions that offer the aforementioned features.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The marketplace has continually responded to the needs of these product marketers with a variety of temporary display solutions. On one end of the spectrum, there are plenty of merchandisers to choose from for efficiently shipping and displaying product at retail. These displays accomplish this by ensuring that the product(s) are compactly placed in the display with very little “empty” space around the product, thereby relying on the marketers, media advertising, product packaging, and in-store advertising and promotional vehicles to help sell thru the product in store. In many cases a small loose “header” card will be designed into the display to help the in store sales effort. Unfortunately, these displays although, low in cost, and often ship efficiently, are viewed as commodity displays designed to hold products and not as tools to help sell thru the product(s). Also, in the case of the “header” card, marketers are aware that, often these loose “header” cards are never placed in the display, and if they are, they will often be taken down before the product is sold thru. The reason for the untimely removal of the “header” may be because it is obstructing the customers, or retailers view, or it may be in the way of reaching other products, or it may be taken down by competitors browsing the store. There is strong evidence for this because more and more marketers are engaging outside merchandising companies to set up and manage their in store display activity, ensuring display compliance. This kind of maintenance, of course, comes at a heavy price. On the other end of the spectrum you will find well heeled marketers that spare no expense in building award winning displays that are extremely effective at selling thru product(s). These displays will allocate as much selling space in the display as is necessary to capture the customer's attention and to ensure strong sell thru. Unfortunately these displays, although very effective at helping sell through the product(s), often allocate a large proportion of the display to the selling message, leaving less space for the product. Also these displays are often comprised of several parts and are costly to produce and ship. Either they ship preassembled with plenty of “empty” space for the selling messages, or they ship knocked-down and require significant setup in-store by store personnel.
Of course, there are constant efforts on the part of marketers and display producers to create more efficient, low cost displays with more selling space designed into the construction, and conversely, there are efforts by fancy display makers to tone down they award winning displays so that they are more efficient to produce and ship. For example, you will now see many in-store displays that have been designed in a way that the “headers are either built into the construction of the display, or at minimum are locked into the display prior to shipment to ensure that they will stay on the display for a longer period of time. These efforts have had reasonably good success. However, they require more parts and/or more labor to accomplish the objective. As for toning down the fancy displays so that they are more cost effective to produce and ship, this is accomplished with a great deal of design time, with different levels of success depending on what features or “selling” space changes would be acceptable to the marketer. After all the more “empty” space there is in a display, the more space there is for messaging. Once that “empty” space is taken away, the less space there is available for the “selling” message.
Unfortunately, there are no known display constructions designed as pre-pack shippers that offer a structure that is systematically simple and low cost to produce, easy to set up, ship efficiently and has a meaningful space for a permanent selling message.